When I was a young child, one of our family traditions was to visit the downtown Detroit J.L. Hudson’s department store to see their holiday windows on Woodward Avenue.
The windows were decorated with Christmas themes, toys, gifts, and figures dressed up for the holidays.
We would ooh and aah over the displays and secretly hope we would find some of the toys under the tree Christmas morning.
I wish we had photos of the Hudson window displays, but I couldn’t find any in our family photo albums.
The tradition of holiday windows at Hudson’s ended decades ago, I believe due to Hudson’s being bought out by several companies.
And that’s why I was so delighted when I was in Philadelphia earlier this month to see the holiday windows tradition lives on at the Center City Macy’s store.
I’m sure several people walking by were surprised to see an adult woman smiling ear-to-ear, so obviously excited to see holiday display windows!
We did the same thing in Buffalo. I don’t recall the name of the store down there that had the displays, but it was always a highlight of Christmas, until we moved away.
Hi Paul,
Ah, I didn’t know that. Was it one of your favorite childhood memories?
Oh yes! I wish I had known about the one in Philly, would love to have seen it!
I think that is one of the reasons that the movie “A Christmas Story” resonates with me so well, I love the memories of the downtown Christmas scenes bring back. I’d love to go back to that time again!
Sorry we didn’t meet up in Philly. Whenever I go to WordCamps, I always take time to explore the city/town/community.
Paul, you would have enjoyed Macy’s in Center City! The store brought back childhood memories for me, visiting the big downtown department store. I spent 40 minutes talking with the store historian (yes, historian!) about the architecture and history of the store. Took a video of the Christmas Light Show (with Julie Andrews narrating) as as audio of the performances on the world’s largest organ on the second floor.
Oh! I SOOO would have loved that! Almost makes me want to take the train back over just to see that!